Omertà
by calciseptine
Summary: Various. The omertà: a code of honor or of silence that, when broken, is punishable only by death. A collection of drabbles. New: 805927, 59L, 80gen, 8059, S80, and 8031. New: FtM!1196, 10080, DS, 1869, and D59.
1. Thirty Drabbles

**Rated**: G to NC-17 for language, violence, and sexual situations  
**Steve's Notes**: These drabbles were written for **pectus_pectoris' 8059 Meme** and **KHR Meme** on LiveJournal. Each prompt was supposed to be answered in a sentence or a drabble. I really stretched some pairing muscles on this one. Hopefully, you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!  
**Disclaimer**: _Katekyou Hitman Reborn!_ © Amano Akira

* * *

**l'agnello** || Reborn/Lambo || curiosity of the curious

He smooths the skirts with his damp palms; he adjusts the lace bow around his throat; he teeters on the needle-like heels of his red stilettos. He chews on his baby pink nails and hopes against hope that he won't cry and smear his make-up.

Nothing goes the way it is supposed to.

His skirts are hiked around his hips; the lace bow is a noose that allows him barely enough air; he's fucked against a wall with little regard to how his thighs tremble with the effort of keeping his body still on six extra inches. He cries because it hurts as much as it doesn't and he smudges his make-up.

Nothing goes the way it is supposed to.

(Then Reborn murmurs, "Pretty thing.")

* * *

**the pain** || Gokudera/Hibari ||any way you want it, that's the way you need it

The last three fingers on his left hand are sprained, more likely broken; blood is sharp on his tongue from the cuts in his mouth, made by his own teeth, and from the blood of his broken nose; his ribs are bruised and he cannot draw a full breath. The world swims around him and the spots of color are flashes of silver fish in it. Even the curse that drops from Gokudera's lips warbles.

Hibari gnashes his teeth to try and taste that, too.

* * *

**rex** || Tsuna/Xanxus || it's good to be king

Xanxus does not like the lion he sees in the small shell of Sawada Tsunayoshi's body; it is something he can respect.

("Xanxus?" the boy chokes as Xanxus straddles his waist. "Xanxus, what are you—")

* * *

**when the world was our sandbox** || Julie/Chrome || the dreams of our past

Before Nagi was Chrome and Julie was a boy, two little girls sat alone in sandbox and watched the sky twist slowly above them. Chrome would dream of this moment in the years to come—the stick-thin cirrus clouds, the heat of the sun, the scowl on Julie's dirty face as her young fingers twisted angrily in the dress her mother had forced her to wear—but she will never wake up and remember.

"I think I've always..." Chrome-once-Nagi murmurs as Julie-once-a-girl slips his fingers into her hand.

* * *

**cancer** || Coyote/Ganauche || hey teacher

Coyote is a stubborn old man with a foul mouth and a fondness for foul cigarettes. Ganauche is only seventeen when his father, Ganauche II, dies during the Cradle Affair; it is Coyote who shows up at the villa to break the news. Ganauche merely steals the tobacco from Coyote's thin lips and takes a liberal drag.

"How did he die?" Ganauche asks as the smoke burns in his lungs, more bearable than the grief in his chest.

"Badly," Coyote replies, and thinks of the way Xanxus pointed his gun in the Lightning Guardian's face. Xanxus would have known Ganauche, Coyote remembers, as Ganauche was only a year older and had gone to the same boarding school. Coyote wonders if the brat thought of that before he pulled the trigger, but dismisses it because it never would have made the difference. "The Varia attempted a coup d'état."

Ganauche takes another drag, and another, and another. When the cigarette is gone, Coyote lights him a second, a third, and more.

.

Timoteo says kindly, "I think it would be best if you taught the boy."

"You're fuckin' nuts," Coyote replies. At sixty-three, he's lost an arm, had many affairs, and never learned patience. "Wouldn't Nie or Brabanters be better?"

Timoteo just smiles.

.

It goes like this: Ganauche proves to be capable, ambitious, and sly, Coyote tries not be impressed, Ganauche never carries cigarettes by always steals Coyote's, and Coyote cuffs the silly boy around the head.

"You little _bastard_," Coyote snarls as Ganauche's fingers flicker between his own and snatch the lightly held stick away. Like any good mafioso, he is nimble and delicate enough to be a pickpocket. "Can't you just—"

Ganauche opens his mouth and he places the cigarette on his lips. He inhales, his dark eyelashes fluttering against the youthful rise of his cheeks, and he holds the smoke long. When he exhales, he returns the cigarette with a cocky, curling grin.

"You can have it back," Ganauche quips.

The filter is slightly damp between Coyote's lips. It is, Coyote thinks, the most lewd kiss he's ever had.

.

"Ganauche is a very capable young man," Timoteo tells Coyote, outside their favorite café in Palermo. The moon hangs a heavy waxing gibbous above them and though it is too bright to see all but the evening star, the iron rails and thin potted trees are coiled in white Christmas lights.

Coyote grunts and swallows more red wine than necessary. The cigarette between his ring and middle finger of his hand is unlit. Ganauche stole his lighter the day before and used the last of his lighter fluid, the little bastard.

"He would make a good addition to our _famiglia_ as our new Lightening Guardian, don't you think?" Timoteo continues.

Coyote grunts again. He knew Ganauche was going to succeed his father the moment Timoteo sent him to break the news to the kid, when Nie would have been a better choice.

"It's settled, then," Timoteo declares. Coyote thinks it is rather self-congratulatory, and clamps down on the unkind thought. "Tell him tomorrow, would you?"

-.

The truth about Ganauche III is this: when he was three, he took his father's large hand with his tiny pair and demanded to have his ring.

"He wouldn't give it to me," Ganauche laughs. "I've wanted it ever since."

Coyote doesn't say anything. He has seen Ganauche charm uncharmable men, win fights that were certain defeats, and pull information out of rocks. Ganauche could make the world eat from the palm of his hand, if he wanted, and the world would be helpless to stop him.

"And do you know what?" Ganauche continues steadily as he nonchalantly plucks the slow-burning cigarette from Coyote's naked, gnarled fingers. "I got it."

* * *

**to the quick** || Squalo/Dino || don't be scared to be human

A fist to his jaw, a knee to his gut. Squalo does not allow these blows nor does he take them out of some sort of misplaced affection; they occur because Dino is sure and strong in his rage and Squalo is too weak to block them.

"You were already better than him!" Dino roars. His fingers are cruel in the short hairs at the nape of Squalo's neck. It is almost too painful and Squalo lets out a hiss. "What were you trying to prove?"

Squalo brings his hand up to scratch—but where there was once a hand, there is only a gauze-ended stump. It gives him pause even though he was the one who removed it, hours ago, without a second thought and the short _wakizashi_ he had picked up. Dino snarls and breaks his knuckles across Squalo's cheek. Dino's grip is the only thing that keeps him from crumpling back onto the bed.

"You are so fucking _stupid!_" Dino yells, his throat raw. Wetness glitters on his light eyelashes, clumping them together. "There had to be another way!"

"There was no other way," Squalo hisses, tilting his head back to alleviate the sting, and keeps the stub of his arm close to his chest, where the wound throbs in time with his heart. "Sometimes, Cavallone, there is only one way to achieve one's goals."

"At the cost of self-mutilation?" Dino snarls, his honey-colored eyes inches from Squalo's, his breath hot and damp on Squalo's cheek.

"A price," Squalo mocks. Dino creeps closer, and Squalo thinks about sinking his teeth into his lower lip, breaking the skin and inviting blood onto his tongue. "What would you do, brat, if you had no choice?"

Dino's eyes flicker to Squalo's mouth. "If I had no choice, I would make my own. If I had no choice, I would make the sacrifices _I_ would be willing to make, not what someone was willing to make for me. If I had not choice, I would not accept fate—and I wouldn't cut off my own hand."

Squalo licks his lips and when Dino catches his gaze, he suddenly knows that his chest is heaving, his cheeks are flushed, and his pupils are blown wide in their irises. His arm, his jaw, everything hurts, but it feels so terribly exquisite. Dino knows it, too, because his breath hitches.

Then he says, so calmly, "_No,_ Squalo. Not like this." He releases his hand—his fingers are bloodless—steps back, and walks from room without looking back.

The door snicks shut quietly. Abandoned, Squalo screams, "Pathetic!"—but the accusation echoes in his ears alone.

* * *

**last request** || Xanxus/Tsuna || restless

The muscles in his naked thighs bunch tight beneath the veneer of his flesh as he stalks around the room; in the pre-dawn light his olive skin is a mellow gold. Tsuna watches him stalk from the warmth of the ostentatious bed they've shared and wonders if he should voice his dearest wish, _Come back to me one more time._

He doesn't. He can't.

Instead, he lets Xanxus pace back and forth, back and forth.

* * *

**a natural progression** || Ryouhei/Tsuna || penny on the tracks

His supple spine a bow, he arches from his childhood bed. The tip of his pink tongue escapes the maw of his open mouth and his small, perfect toes dig white into the old and worn robot-patterned sheets. Ryouhei's hands—so big and heavy and strong—are the only thing that keeps his undulating body together.

"Sawada—" Ryouhei grunts, his face twisted as though in great pain, his voice rough and so low. "Sawada—"

* * *

**old men, old tricks** || Shamal/Tsuyoshi || the start of the storm

_Okay,_ Shamal thinks deliriously as the bullet drills into his shoulder, _that stings a little._

With the adrenaline coursing through him, Shamal grits his teeth, switches hands, and fires a returning bullet into the bastard's head. Beside him, Tsuyoshi cuts down the last two men, cleans his blade on their black uniforms.

"I don't have a mosquito for this," Shamal when he crumples to his knees, panting hard and his vision doubling, swimming. He laughs weakly, and even that throbs. "I should work on that."

Tsuyoshi says something after that, like _it's too dangerous to go back now_ and _the old-fashioned way_. Tsuyoshi must also drag him to his feet by his good arm and lead him away from the ambush-turned-carnage, because when Tsuyoshi cuts him out of his shirt and suit-coat, they're back at Takezushi. Tsuyoshi lays him flat across one of the longer tables and puts a cool hand against his pounding jugular, his thumb unconsciously smoothing circles into Shamal's sweaty skin. It is almost enough to distract Shamal from the pain and the poured saké and the knife when it goes in.

Shamal bites down. There is something wooden there—chopsticks?—and he feels it give slightly beneath the force of his jaw. He screams because he has never liked pain, and he feels his throat convulse around the noise. The knife is long and sharp, Tsuyoshi's hands are steady and skilled, and the bullet comes out with a sick sucking noise that Shamal hasn't heard since the cadavers in medical school. _Am I dead?_ he wants to ask, but there is another splash of burning saké and Shamal wonders if he'll even remember the intense pain.

"Almost done," Tsuyoshi murmurs above him, and the rest is easy. Sterile cotton pads, rolls upon rolls of gauze, and medical tape to keep it together. It will hold for the few hours they have to stay until someone comes to gets them.

And it is an eternity of pain that becomes less sharp but no less painful, a pain that pulses with his heartbeat, as Tsuyoshi cleans the blood from Shamal's shaking body. It is an eternity when Tsuyoshi helps him sit and redress in an old, spare button-up, then a blanket to help with the cold. It is an eternity as they share the last bit of saké, the good saké, and it is an eternity before Tsuyoshi steps into the acute angle of Shamal's thighs and joins him.

"Just this once," Shamal tells him as he presses his scraggly face into the warm curve of Tsuyoshi's neck. He smells like sweat and blood and fish. "We can blame it on the shock."

Tsuyoshi laughs weakly and whispers non sequitur, "Anything."

* * *

**the pillar** || Enma/Tsuna || won't rush to your arms when the thunder strikes

Being brave does not mean being incapable of fear; being in love does not mean being incapable of hate. Enma understands this, more than he understands geometry or battle of personal pride or breaking into the Vendicare prison, so when Tsuna—no good and eyes burning with Dying Will—reaches for him, Enma takes a step back and shakes his head.

But he does say, "Thank you."

* * *

**the sins** || Shamal/Tsuyoshi || (mis)understanding your world

If Shamal had a son, he wouldn't be a snot-nosed brat like Gokudera Hayato, who is intelligent but too stubborn and too impatient. If Shamal had a son, he wouldn't be like Tsuyoshi's kid either, who gives Shamal the willies when he drops his smile and cuts his gaze into everything with his hawk-colored eyes.

A glass of warm saké in front of him, Shamal shares this revelation with Tsuyoshi, who tilts his long face back in laughter and exposes his long neck.

"We cannot know what fate may bring us, my friend," he says with playful mirth, and touches the small lacquer cup to his lips. "I wanted a son who would inherit this shop. Get married. Have sons who would inherit the shop after them."

"Disappointments, the lot of them," Shamal mutters into the night air. He thinks of Gokudera, who copied his haircut and his bombs, who surpassed in many ways and will never surpass him in others. Disappointment is not the only word for it; pride may be the other.

"Yes," Tsuyoshi replies, his smile wrinkling his not-very-handsome face. "But not so much."

Shamal pauses. Then he refills his cup, knocks it back, and waits for Tsuyoshi to scold him into enjoying it for a little longer.

* * *

**cold blood** || Cozart/Giotto, G/Giotto || rebound

In this dim, pre-dawn light, you can squint and it would almost be the same. Almost, because his hair is a shade darker and bit longer; almost, because his skin is pale, just a flush lighter; almost, because his body is broader and rangier. Like you almost want him, like you almost love him, like you almost wish he were the one who was dead.

"Giotto?" he yawns, his voice still rough and heavy with sleep. Then, "The sun isn't even up."

"It's nothing," you reply, and remove your fingers from his—not his—skin. "Go back to sleep, my dear friend."

* * *

**the offer** || Mukuro/Fran || the real hell inside of you

Fourteen and spreading his candy-stick thighs with a pretty sigh, he lets you touch his naked skin with your leather-clad hand.

(It is an illusion, of course, this calm he pretends to have; inside, his heart skitters and his lungs seize. You could rip that serenity to shreds with your teeth or your tongue, but you are a benevolent and patient master. You can wait.)

"Shishou," the boy murmurs as he pushes his too-long hair out of his disinterested eyes—another illusion. "Is that all there is?"

(You can wait, but he is so impatient. Your mouth curls, sly and indulgent.)

"Do be quiet," you reply, and touch him with your leather-clad hand. He gasps in sweet surprise and arches his young spine, his scapulae tight against the wispy sheets. "I cannot teach when you interrupt me."

* * *

**to die** || Yamamoto/Gokudera || wake up

When the nurse leaves, Hayato lights a cigarette and watches the smoke curl against the ceiling. He stays long after it is gone and long after the sun has settled into the horizon to sleep. He stays even when the nurse tells him to go home and get some rest. He stays and stays and stays, withering slow like the curl of burning tobacco and paper, like the boy he crawls next to and stretches out beside. He stays and matches his inhales to inhales, his exhales to exhales, his atrophy to atrophy.

But he does not sleep.

* * *

**and found lacking** || Yamamoto/Gokudera/Hibari || polamory

There was that girl back in middle school, who wore sticky lip gloss that almost tasted like cherries and left adolescent smears against his skin. Then there was that boy who hit with such fluidity that it took his breath away—that boy took his breath away again as he sunk to his knees and looked up from underneath the sooty smear of his lashes. There was a woman, Italian, who wore slinky black dresses and diamonds in the hollow of her throat; there was a silly thing who smoked Lucky Sevens; there was a man whose biceps strained as he picked Takeshi up and fucked him into the wall.

None were firsts. All the firsts came in the tight and uneasy bundle of Gokudera Hayato, who snarled, "This doesn't mean _shit,_" though both of them knew that was a terrible lie. The "we're not exclusive, either," was not the truth either, but it was not a lie of the flesh. The real lie comes when Takeshi's lips linger against the swell of bone behind Gokudera's pierced ear, slick with sweat. The devotion Takeshi feels is caged behind his teeth; it was easy to swallow at first, but one day he will choke on it.

"Only herbivores do not take what they want," Hibari tells him when he is close to choking. Takeshi feels Hibari's sharp eyes take in the askew of his collar, the stubble on his cheeks. Then he goads, "I thought too highly of you."

Takeshi has had his fair share—girls and boys, men and women—but he never gave them more than his body. He never shared. But when Hibari slinks away, a coil of triumph in the tension of his swagger, Takeshi realizes that maybe he always has.

* * *

**alone, but not alone** || Yamamoto/Gokudera || a little bit of sunshine

Their first apartment in Tokyo consists of a main room large enough to fit a couch, a television, and occasionally Takeshi's duffel bag, a kitchen filled with more chemistry glassware than a high school laboratory and a nearly empty fridge (empty, if one did not include the opened bottle of red wine and tub of marinara sauce with green-white fuzz on it), a bathroom with a closet-sized shower, and a bedroom that only fit the bed. It is all they can afford on Takeshi's meager earnings as a minor league baseball player and Hayato's minimum wage night job. It isn't glamorous—it is a far cry from the marble villas and extravagant space of Hayato's childhood, and even a house above a sushi shop for Takeshi—but it is _theirs_. In this tiny space, Hayato can smoke as many cheap Lucky Sevens as he wants and sit around all day in little more than his boxers and his cherry red reading glasses. In this tiny space, Takeshi can let his smile fall into a neutral line and boil water over the Bunsen burner, just enough for two cups of instant ramen. In this tiny space, Hayato and Takeshi can touch and kiss and fuck and—finally—be unafraid of the world beyond.

* * *

**concessions** || Yamamoto/Gokudera || the way he laughs

Takeshi knows the remark is silly and stupid and terribly adolescent, but he says it regardless. It is a moment of humiliation soothed by Gokudera as he snarls, _idiota!_—then he hunches his bony shoulders inward and clamps down on his cigarette, so that the burn of tobacco smoke will smother the laughter tight in his lungs.

* * *

**death do we part** || Yamamoto/Gokudera || Hibari Kyouya

"I'm not him—" Takeshi tries to reason, but the bitter kiss bitten into his mouth and the hand curled cruel in his hair are hard demands to disobey. "He would—"

Kyouya pulls back just far enough for Takeshi to see the distaste and anger in his slanted eyes. "The dead have no opinions, Yamamoto Takeshi," he whispers before he descends once more, teeth bared and sharp.

Takeshi would say, _I loved him too,_ but the kiss he returns screams, _I loved him more than you._

* * *

**one and two and three** || Yamamoto/Gokudera || three little words

The first word Hayato utters most is a swift curse he would never say in front of his mother, and only under his breath in front of his sister. The second word Hayato says most is a reverential "Tenth!", because he's believes in titles and the power they have. The third word Hayato gives most use to is idiot—in no less than seven languages—even though there is only one person who makes it sound like something else entirely.

* * *

**the glass of Amarone** || Yamamoto/Gokudera || Dino Cavallone

Takeshi has always liked Dino, with his easy smile and his devotion to his _famiglia_—things Takeshi knows are mirrored in him. He admires, too, the way Dino's expressive eyes flatten as his fist tightens around the heaviness of his whip, how Dino's voice remains even when he threatens another man's life, how he goes into a fight with his head high and a smile across his mouth. Takeshi has always thought he understood Dino, and not just as one mafia man to another, but as two kind men who sometimes did cruel things.

Cruel things, like press another glass of Amarone into Gokudera's hands.

"You're far too sober for this, Hayato," Dino purrs into Hayato's hair, close only because Gokudera is too drunk to notice. Then, softly, something in musical Italian that makes Gokudera bark in drunken laughter. Takeshi's fingers curl tightly around the stem of his own wineglass.

It goes slowly. Dino is patient—Takeshi has always valued Dino's infallible patience—and calculating. He brings expensive wines to tempt Gokudera's refined palate, waits for the hesitation in Gokudera's body, and drags out answers with his fingers. They linger on Gokudera's wrist, his elbow, his shoulder, the exposed region of his neck, and once, his hip. Gokudera does not notice the progression of the touches as he does not notice the progression of his intoxication, as Takeshi notices, as Takeshi seethes.

"_Segui,_" Dino murmurs when the crowd begins to disperse, as he gently pries the wine from Gokudera's hand. "_Segui,_ Hayato."

Takeshi is not sure if he has ever seen Gokudera acquiesce so demurely; he has never seen Gokudera look down and touch his tongue to the swell of his lip, such an insecure and provocative gesture that it can be nothing but unconscious. Dino smiles, easy, and threads his fingers into the short hairs of Gokudera's temple. "Soon, baby, soon," he croons, and Takeshi cannot help the swell of arousal and anger that pushes through him as Gokudera's mouth parts for a low, pleading moan.

"He's ready," Dino says, too loudly, and Takeshi nearly swallows his tongue when Dino's golden eyes pin him. Understanding slams into Takeshi like a bullet and he lets his anger bleed away; admiration for Dino replaces the hollows let behind. "Are you coming?"

Takeshi smiles and sets down his wine glass. "Of course," he replies smoothly, allows his hand to find the small of Gokudera's back. Gokudera arches into the touch with a faint hiss, and over his head Dino and Takeshi exchange a private secret.

After all, he and Dino are not so different.

* * *

**Luciano** || Yamamoto/fem!Gokudera || pregnant

Underneath the clean lines of her suit a bump emerges, unnoticeable at first but soon unmistakable. It grows beside a Beretta, a few explosives, and a menagerie of boxes that will one day be the Sistema C.A.I. The baby is not Takeshi's—Gokudera is tight-lipped about the real father, only snarling _fucking bastard_ and picking at the edges of a nicotine patch when someone tries to ask—but in the private recesses of his brain, he calls the bump _theirs._

(Because what is a father, exactly? Is it the man who had the pleasure of Gokudera's body but not the pleasure of the consequences? Is it the man who gave twenty-three chromosomes or the man who smiles as he presses his face against the warm swell of a once-flat belly? Is it some asshole with a dick and no face, or is it Takeshi, who loves Gokudera and her son and would die for either of them, both of them?)

Eventually, the inevitable happens. It's a cold day in December, just after _La Festa di Santa Lucia,_ and Takeshi is haggling with a vendor on the street. His phone vibrates and before he can even chirp a greeting, Gokudera is snarling, "—just fucking broke in the middle of a conversation with that fucking Cavallone _bastard,_ and if you're not fucking there I'm going to name him something ridiculously sentimental, like Takemaru or whatever the fuck names your dad likes and—_ahhh, fuck!_—Takeshi, get your ass to the base _right fucking now_—"

Takeshi knows his smile is ridiculous as he pulls the phone from his ear, Gokudera's cussing spilling faintly from the receiver. "I'm sorry," he tells the vendor, and hands him a few euros for the simple daises Takeshi was going to give Gokudera when he told her he loved her. "My son is apparently as impatient as his mother."

(But Takeshi knows that maybe Gokudera has known all along.)

* * *

**the three step program** || Gokudera || something gentle

He can barely afford rent. He can barely afford the cheap Lucky Sevens he smokes. He can barely afford food.

But he can hardly afford to let those three kittens die there—two already dead—soaked and cold and mewling pathetically in their cardboard box.

Sighing, he picks up them up.

Looks like he's going to have to stop smoking, after all.

* * *

**we broke more than one tradition (so why stop now?)** || Yamamoto/Gokudera || Sawada Tsunayoshi (as a friend)

"—support you _completely,_" Tsuna tells his right- and left-hand men, his Dying Will burning behind his eyes. "I will _never_ abandon my friends."

* * *

**distillation, or removing impurities** || Gokudera/Yamamoto || chemistry lab

"Organic chemistry lab is ten percent hard work, ninety percent sitting with our thumbs up our asses," Gokudera tells him as he makes sure the distillation tubes are hooked together properly. He clicks his tongue as he tightens something, and Takeshi sees the flash of silver.

"So, I just wait?" Takeshi says distractedly.

"Basically," Gokudera grumbles as he lights the Bunsen burner, adjusting the gas until the flame is perfectly blue at the bottom. Then he pins Takeshi with eyes as green as copper in fire and says, "This is your second time taking this lab, Shamal said."

Takeshi lets his smile stretch—he would never tell Gokudera that he purposefully failed last semester to get him as a TA—and rolls his shoulders in an easy shrug. "I didn't get it," he replies.

"You passed the class with an 87," Gokudera snaps, and Takeshi pictures Gokudera sneaking into Shamal's office and digging through the records. "Lab only cements the concepts. I bet you skipped to go to the batting cages, or some shit like that."

Takeshi just shrugs again; it is better for Gokudera to think that than to _know_ that Takeshi came to every class, but daydreamed of him, outside the third story lab on the fire escape, smoking his way steadily through his Lucky Sevens.

"I'm only doing this because Shamal asked me to," Gokudera continues, and steps into Takeshi's personal space. He smells like ash, sharp chemicals, and a subtle cologne. "If you waste my time, I _will_ kill you and put your body in a tub of hydrochloric acid."

Gokudera is so close, if Takeshi just tilted his head—

"I won't," Takeshi replies, and shifts back on his stool. Gokudera steps back and smoothes his vintage print t-shirt.

"Good," Gokudera snaps. "Now, let's work on the lab questions while this distills. I don't want to be stuck here all night with a dumb jock."

Takeshi merely smiles.

* * *

**make like a tree (and stay rooted)** || Ryouhei/Koyo || i don't like asking for help

"Be _still,_" Ryouhei snarls as Koyo tries to twist away. Ryouhei's ribs are broken; it isn't easy to hold Koyo down.

"Like hell I'm going to listen to you!" Koyo snaps back, but the harshness he aims for is lost in the rapid flutter of his heart and the lightness in his head as too much blood spills from his side. "I don't need your—_ahhh_—"

Ryouhei digs his fingers into the bullet wound and almost feels bad as Koyo's green, green eyes roll back into his head. The digits make a sick suctioning noise as he pulls them back out, sticky with Koyo's thick and viscous blood; he's heard and seen worse. He wipes it off on his pant leg.

"Hold extremely still, alright?" Ryouhei repeats, slow in contrast to the ignition of his ring that blazes white in the middle and yellow on the periphery. Koyo's mouth opens to protest, but there is a wet gurgle and a bubble of blood bursts out instead of a curse.

It is an excruciating process. Gokudera had tried to explain it to him once, ages ago when they were still in high school and Gokudera took it upon himself to explore the properties of each Dying Will they possessed. He threw around phrases like _accelerated cellular regeneration_ and _mitochondrial stimulation,_ but the only thing Ryouhei understood was that his flame stitched up even the worst wounds within minutes, even if it did wear him down as a consequence. It would even turn the indecipherable mess in Koyo's side into little more than flesh and a fibrous starburst, even if it hurt as much as the bullet did going in and made a headache unfurl at Ryouhei's temples.

When it is all over, Koyo's body still trembles from the excess adrenaline. His spine is still arched off the ground and the muscles in his thighs are still tense. His pale green eyelashes creep like ivy down his flushed cheeks and his breaths come fast and shallow. Ryouhei is too busy watching Koyo to see Koyo's fist until it is planted between his eyes.

"Argh!" Ryouhei shouts as he feels his nose break under the punch. His ribs blaze as he twists too violently.

"I told you not to bother, but in the end you never fuckin' listen!" Koyo snaps as he hauls himself upright. "Fuckin' moron, you shouldn't use your flame like that when you're too weak to even block a stupid hook."

Ryouhei tries not to think; even thinking hurts.

"Urgh," Koyo groans. He stands, wipes the drying blood on his chin away with his ruined suitcoat. "Stay here. I'm going to go find someone who can put up with your stupidity."

Ryouhei tries not to smile. He tries.

* * *

**the barber** || Dino/Squalo || the words you wouldn't say

His head flung back, his throat exposed, his hair scattered like straw across the cold marble floor—Squalo bent forward, biting into Dino's pulse, the threat stifled against Dino's warm and accepting skin.

Instead, Squalo snarls, "It will never be you."

Dino just laughs.

* * *

**growing pains** || TYL!Kyoko/present!Tsuna || a taste of the future

A flash, a kaleidoscope of color, and the sensation of being spread too thin.

"—in the back, three coming from the hallway entrance, and—Tsu-kun?"

Tsuna looks up at the same moment Kyouko looks down. She is wearing a black dress that barely falls to the middle of her thighs, her thin shoulders exposed to the cool air. All the missing material is gathered in the small of her back, pulled together like an elaborate _obi_ of taffeta. There are strands upon strands of thin gold looped around her neck and falling from her ears; her feet are bare, but her impossibly high stilettos are next to her. Tsuna's mouth goes dry and slack; the noise that crawls out of his throat meant _you're gorgeous_ when it formed in his brain.

Her long eyelashes sweep against her upper cheeks as she mutters Lambo's name like a curse. Only then does Tsuna see the gun in her hands, glinting in the light from the ornate chandelier like her ring.

"Huh?" he says intelligently. "What are you—"

The sound of a bullet ricocheting cuts him off. He freezes, but Kyouko grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him down so quickly he stumbles and scrapes his palms against the floor. She glances at him to make sure he's okay, then rises above the cover of the overturned table to fire three rounds. There is a shout that is violently cut off. Kyouko slumps back down quickly, and there is the crack of a gun and a dull thud as a bullet buries into the heavy wood protecting them.

"Tsu-kun," Kyouko says as Tsuna begins to hyperventilate. What is going on and why does Kyouko have a gun and who is shooting at them and _why does Kyouko have a gun?_ "Tsu-kun, listen to me."

Tsuna looks at Kyouko's gun.

"Tsu-kun," Kyouko says softly. Tsuna almost flinches when her small, soft hand tilts his chin up; instead, he inhales with a sharp and startled _hiee._ "Tsu-kun, it was bound to happen sooner or later."

A few more rounds lodge themselves into the table. Kyouko doesn't look away from Tsuna, her big brown eyes hardly blinking. Some of her perfectly swept back hair has escaped its confines and brushes against her jawline.

"Will you do me a favor?" Kyouko asks him, then.

"W—what is it?"

Kyouko smiles and, just before he is spread too thin once more, she says, "Tell Lambo to knock it off."

* * *

**undercover lover** || G/Ugetsu || ugetsu dresses as a woman; g is "her" companion

Her make-up is carefully applied, skin painted white, mouth stained red, eyebrows sooted black. This does not hide her strong jaw nor her high forehead; rather, it accents her striking, masculine features and makes them elegant, nearly regal. Her layered kimono, slung so low in the back it reveals her prominent vertebrae and the play of smooth muscle of her shoulders, is folded conservatively, almost prudishly, high in the front. She is almost too tall, but her grace saves her.

"What do you think?" she asks her companion, a foreign man in a pinstripe suit and hair as red as persimmons. He looks her head to toe. His slow desire is as obvious as the slow curl of smoke from the end of his cigarette, obvious only to those from a distance.

"You are one ugly broad," he replies.

She cuffs him upside the head with her fan—but laughs too, deep and throaty, as he hides his smile behind his tobacco. They are an odd couple.

It hardly matters.

* * *

**falling short** || Tsuna/Mochida || why

Tsuna thinks of him as the boy he once was, a _sempai_ who sneered and bullied and called him no good, as everyone else called him no good. He thinks of the boy that had loved the same girl; he thinks of how they both yearned for her attention. Back then, neither deserved her respect; when they earned it, they were men and knew enough to never hoard her. There is no resentment for Tsuna; there is only peace.

"I swear myself to you," Mochida murmurs reverently as he kneels, so naked, and presses his lips to Tsuna's heavy ring. "I swear myself to you and only you."

Tsuna waits until Mochida pulls away before he kneels as well. "And I to you," he replies breathlessly. "Only—"

* * *

**fishpaste** || Naruto, I-pin || ramen

"Naruto-san?" I-pin calls from the other side of the door, her eyebrows drawn together in vague worry. "Naruto-san, I have your miso ramen!"

The apartment gives no reply.

"Naruto-san?" I-pin calls again, knocking a little harder on the bright orange door. It's not like the older man to not answer her almost immediately; he loves ramen nearly as much as Kawahira-ji. "Naruto-san?"

There is a soft, human noise inside. If I-pin were just a normal fifteen year old girl, worried about school and her part-time job and one of her regular customers, she might not have heard it. As it is, I-pin is worried about school and her part-time job and one of her regular customers, but she has also been trained in martial arts since she could walk. The old door does not stand a chance.

"Naruto-san!" I-pin cries as she darts into the living room. It is familiar, as she has seen it many times from the door: the tall, healthy plants in the corner by the window, a battered couch with sunken cushions, and a dark-haired man spread naked across the carpet.

_Oh,_ I-pin's normally sharp brain backtracks as she takes in the handsome man pinned by Naruto-san's long, tan body. _Oh, I guess I haven't seen that before._

Above the man, Naruto-san turns his head. His normally open and smiling face is replaced with hooded eyes and a twisted mouth; his gold hair sticks to his sweaty skin. Beneath him, the man wriggles, shifts his hips upwards and locks his legs more tightly around Naruto-san's waist. I-pin's eyes are invariably drawn to where they are joined, and she feels something dark, hot, and not entirely unfamiliar race down her spine.

"Ah," Naruto-san grunts, and his voice is a register lower than I-pin remembers it. "I-pin. I'm sorry I didn't answer the door, but I was a little—"

"_Preoccupied,_" the man interjects coldly, his tone at odds with the warm pink spread from the tips of his ears to the center of his chest. He shifts his hips again, subtly, and Naruto-san makes a noise that is between a curse and a snarl. "Leave."

"Sasuke," Naruto-san snaps, bearing down. The dark-haired man's sour, red mouth goes slack and I-pin feels her already wide eyes go wider. "Don't be rude."

The dark-haired man tries to say something, but Naruto-san's reaches between them and covers him with a hand. The man chokes on air and pleasure.

"I-pin," Naruto-san says, an edge to his calm voice. "I-pin, could you leave the ramen on the counter? I'll heat it up later. Just put the price on a tab or something—"

"—make me pay for all of—_ahhh_—" the man below tries to interject again, but Naruto-san's hand swivels at the wrist and the man's eyes flutter shut, his neck curves sensually.

"The counter, I-pin," Naruto-san tries again, his red-tinged eyes more than a little desperate. "Tab. Please go."

I-pin's brain catches up and her face is on sudden fire. She turns, leaves the ramen on the counter, and even manages to pick the door up and put it back in its frame. Then she runs down the apartment complex's stairs, onto the street, and all the way back to the ramen shop. The owner doesn't even look up from his grill as I-pin collapses on one of the bar stools.

"How was Naruto?" Teuchi-san asks.

I-pin hides her face in her hands in response.

* * *

end.


	2. Eight Drabbles

**Rated**: G to NC-17 for language, violence, and sexual situations  
**Steve's Notes**: These drabbles were written in celebration of Yamamoto's return in ch. 325.  
**Disclaimer**: _Katekyou Hitman Reborn!_ © Amano Akira

* * *

**pierced** || PG-13 || 142 || Gokudera/Tsuna/Yamamoto || for **hiza_chan**

Gokudera sits in front of Tsuna, an unlit cigarette trapped between his lips. His thighs rest on either side of Tsuna's pelvis and his bony knees dig into Tsuna's ribs. He rolls the cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other as he stares absently at the sky and its cottonball clouds, the white paper and gold filter occasionally catching on his new lip ring. Tsuna watches as avidly as Yamamoto, whose chin rests on Tsuna's shoulder and whose growing arousal Tsuna can feel against the small of his back.

"Do you think he knows?" Yamamoto murmurs huskily into Tsuna's ear. It makes him shiver and the almost imperceptible movement causes Gokudera's acid green eyes return to them, to the earth.

"No," Tsuna replies as Gokudera's mouth becomes a sharp frown, the lip ring glinting in the summer sun. "Never."

* * *

**an expected delight** || NC-17 || 197 || Gokudera/Lambo || for **alcedines**

His adolescent knees knock against Gokudera's torso, blunt and painful against the bruised ribs. Gokudera snarls a reprimand against Lambo's slender throat but the warning is either unheard or unheeded; Lambo's knees dig into his gauze-covered chest moments later.

"Little _shit,_" Gokudera snarls as he pulls back and wraps his hands around Lambo's skinny thighs, his thumbs in the hollows below his hamstrings. Lambo cries out something in garbled Italian at the sudden change and the sharp pain of Gokudera's nails in his skin, but his cock jumps between them. Gokudera notices and smirks. He growls, "Like that?" as he digs his nails in harder.

Lambo whines. The tears in the corners of his hooded eyes become heavier until his eyelashes could not possibly hold onto them any longer; they fall down the crescents of his ruddy cheeks. His fingers twist in the bed sheets and his toes curl tightly. But he nods frantically, his dark curls sticking to his sweaty skin and his ivory teeth biting into his pink mouth.

"Yeah," Gokudera murmurs then, almost to himself. He rakes a stinging line of red own Lambo's legs; Lambo hiccoughs a wet moan. "That's a good boy."

* * *

**a boy, a bird, and a dog** || G || 310 || Yamamoto, Jirou, Kojirou || for **mochalatt3**

His new scar a starburst over his abdomen, his new ring glittering on his body, the first thing Yamamoto thinks is, _I need to find Tsuna_ and then, _Gokudera. I need to tell him—_

He squashes the thought as it rises in him like panic. He needs this strange calm he's possessed since he woke up to Byakuran's smiling face and teasing explanation, to a modified ring and a terrible urgency. He didn't panic when Byakuran called him a friend nor when he dressed in the comfortable, but unfamiliar clothes pressed into his hands. He didn't panic when his legs nearly folded beneath him as he stood nor when his empty stomach longed for his father's sushi and a tall glass of milk. He did not panic because he must not panic, not when his friends are in danger.

"Your ring will find them," Byakuran says as he unfolds his long, white wings. "I'll see you later, eh?"

He leaves and Yamamoto breathes life into Jirou and Kojirou with a delicate flame not unlike a heartbeat. An expressive akita, Jirou jumps into Yamamoto's arms with a short bark and nuzzles his chin, licks his face. The crystal embedded between his eyes scratches at Yamamoto's skin, but his fur is soft and warm. Kojirou, less expressive but no less affectionate, lets the dog have his moment with their master before he trills. He settles on Yamamoto's out-stretched hand, flaps his sapphire wings, and pulls at the small, unwashed hairs at Yamamoto's temple when Yamamoto brings him close.

"Yeah, yeah," Yamamoto laughs as the animals bring him the comfort and the fortitude he did not know he needed. He allows himself to think of nothing but their simple affection for him for a single, warm moment. Then he forces himself to pull away and say, "Okay guys. Let's go find our family."

* * *

**a spoonful of sugar** || PG || 136 || Yamamoto/Gokudera + Lambo || for **alcedines**

Lambo is nine, still in love with grape candy and playing mobster, when Gokudera is shot three times in some back alley in Palermo.

"Do you think he'll like it?" Lambo asks Yamamoto when he's allowed to visit. He's almost scared to talk to Yamamoto, who has a hard edge in his eyes that is not unlike the hard edge of his sword. Uselessly, he adds, "They're my favorites."

Yamamoto looks at the table next to the hospital bed, where an opened package of sweets rests purple and innocent among the sterile white and unforgiving steel. The smile that comes to his lips almost makes the nausea Lambo feels disappear.

"Yeah," Yamamoto replies as he uses his free hand, the hand not holding Gokudera's limp fingers, to ruffle Lambo's curly hair. "He's going to love it."

* * *

**growing pains** || PG || 884 || Yamamoto + Yamapapa || for **faorism**

Home will not always be two bedrooms, one bath, and a living space above a family-owned sushi restaurant. Someday it will be a small apartment in Tokyo with a battered couch, a double wide futon, and an ashtray or two on the kitchen counter. Someday after that it will be a sprawling villa in Palermo, where he has an extravagant room that he never sleeps in, but another technically-isn't-his room with schematics warring with whetting stones on the coffee table and wide, often open French doors that allow the wind to carry in the scent of the Mediterranean. Someday he will know home isn't a place but a person who swears and smokes and only says _I love you_ when he thinks Takeshi can't hear him.

But that is some day, and not this day, when Takeshi is fifteen years old and standing outside the front entrance to Takezushi like a stranger. Inside, he can hear his father cleaning the bar and singing along—quite badly—to some old _enka_ music that his mother loved. It takes all the courage he has and more to raise his hands from his sides and open the door, and even more to call out, "I'm home!"

Behind the bar, his father stops singing. There is a rag in his hand and soy sauce on his sleeve. He looks exactly the same as he did two months ago, when Takeshi had told him that he would come home late because he was going to stay after school to practice pitching with Kaoru.

"Decide to come home?" his father asks as he goes back to his cleaning. The movements are ritualistic after all these years. "I was wondering where you had gone off to this time."

"I was helping my friends," Takeshi says without hesitation. He does not regret helping his _famiglia_ nor the Shimon. "I went to Italy."

His father clicks his tongue and Takeshi almost flinches. Ever since he was a small child, that was always the noise his father made when he was disappointed. Eventually, after he has cleaned all the needle-like sashimi knives, his father continues, "Your friends must have been in a lot of trouble."

"Yes," Takeshi answers simply, because it is the simple truth.

"Alright," his father says. He looks up at Takeshi and gestures to a stool in front of him. "Come sit down."

Each step is a battle. Takeshi wants nothing more than to turn around and flee. There is a set of stairs in the back of the restaurant that leads directly to the second floor; he could have taken them and snuck into his bedroom, changed out of his dirty clothes and put on some clean bandages. But then he would have had to face his father in the morning with the knowledge that he had hidden from the man who taught him courage, and that alone had made the decision for him.

He sits. His father stares at him, takes in his bloody knuckles, the gritty gauze on his face and hands, the easy rest of the Shigure Kintoki between his shoulder blades. "Wait here," his father says.

The two minutes Takeshi waits, listening to the sounds of ceramic in the kitchen, are an eternity. When his father returns, he's carrying a bottle of saké and a pair of small, black lacquer cups. He sets one down on the counter in front of him and the other on the bar in front of Takeshi. He fills them both and the comforting smell of warm saké wafts up.

"You are not done growing," his father begins as he sets the bottle down. "And I always asked myself, 'What are you doing with that boy, Tsuyoshi? He has nothing in his head but baseball, baseball, baseball. Yes, he will inherit the shop from you one day, so he has a future, but shouldn't you try to encourage him to do something else?'"

His father pauses to sip at his saké. Takeshi does not touch his cup.

"Then you met that boy with the wild hair and called him your friend. You have a foreign friend who smokes and no regard for his elders. You had never really had friends before, so I allowed you to do as you pleased. Then you started disappearing, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months. I never heard from you, not once in all those times, but I told myself that you were a good boy. You would do nothing but make me proud."

Takeshi looks up at his father. He would proudly say, "I am Vongola" if he could, but his voice sticks in his throat. How does he tell his father that, at fifteen, he's a member of the mafia world's most powerful family? Not only a member, but within the inner circle? How can he say he will probably never play baseball professionally, that he will probably never inherit Takezushi, that everything his father ever wanted for him will never pass?

"Do you want to know what I think, Takeshi? I think you are still growing. But at fifteen, you are one of the best men it has ever been my good fortune to know." His father lifts his cup again. "Welcome home, son."

This time, Takeshi drinks with him.

* * *

**picking up pieces** || R || 886 || Gokudera/Yamamoto || for **melissa_42**

Physical therapy is not easy.

No one ever said it would be—his doctors and his psychologist had stressed the opposite—but Takeshi had not given the supposed difficulty of it any second thought. After all, he had more than one ruthless and impossibly demanding tutor during his life; how different could it be?

But physical therapy is different from his father's exacting katas, Reborn's precise demands, or Squalo's hands-on, no holds barred training. Every time he attempted something with his tutors, no matter how hard, he eventually triumphed. Now even a single step is exhausting. It frustrates him because he knows he could run and run for _miles_ if only his legs would obey his demands. It is infinitely worse than breaking his arm and being replaced as starter on the baseball team because, even when he had been willing to die from the stagnation of it all, he had known he would get better. This injury is different. It is hardly a clean break in his radius that will heal in six weeks; it is a mess of nerves and muscle that cannot regenerate and may never heal at all.

"Hey, idiot!" Gokudera snarls from the other side of the bathroom door. "Are you fuckin' _drowning?_ You better be, making me wait so goddamned long!"

Takeshi jerks and the water in the bathtub sloshes over the rim. It is lukewarm. "A—ah, I was just getting out!" Takeshi replies as he tears his gaze away from his atrophied legs. He reaches for the bar his father had to install so he could get himself in and out of the tub. "I'll be there in a minute."

Gokudera mutters something foul and Italian under his breath. It takes Takeshi much longer than a minute to haul himself out and dress, but when he wheels into his bedroom, neither he nor Gokudera comment on it. Takeshi towel dries his wet hair as Gokudera sucks on a cheap Mild Seven, blowing the smoke out the open window. He finishes just as Takeshi maneuvers from the wheelchair to his bed, the action still stiff and awkward with inexperience. Gokudera watches him rearrange his legs stoically, his acid green eyes half-lidded and his nicotine stained mouth a straight line. Takeshi tries to distract himself by reaching for the chemistry textbook on his bedside table, but before he can ask Gokudera for more help on balancing equations, Gokudera snaps, "Not now."

Takeshi's eyes flicker upwards in time to see Gokudera flick the Mild Seven filter out the cracked window. His heart begins to beat faster as Gokudera strides over and sinks down onto the mattress, next to Takeshi. He's so close Takeshi can feel the heat roil off his body.

"I want to fuckin' kill him," Gokudera says without preamble. His face and his hands are unerringly steady; he's absolutely serious. "I want to beat his face in until his own mother wouldn't recognize his face. I want to break all his fingers, then his legs, then his ribs. I want to put a real bullet through his brain for even _touching_ you. You are _my_ responsibility, do you understand?"

Takeshi's blood roars in his ears. He tries to laugh but his throat refuses to let more than a whistle of air out.

"_Cristo,_" Gokudera swears, his stoic façade crumbling in the frustrated corners of his eyes and mouth. "I'm fuckin' trying to tell you—"

Takeshi's legs are almost useless now that they are not bolstered by illusion, but his arms are stronger. His fingers become vices in Gokudera's shirt and he drags the other boy forward until their mouths touch. Their noses mash together and it's terribly awkward until Gokudera tilts his head and parts the seam of his lips. Then it's wonderful and Takeshi desperately tries to suck Gokudera's anger and passion out through his mouth, and Gokudera readily gives it to him with his heavy, bitter tongue and the sharp edge of his teeth.

"He was just—trying to—protect his family," Takeshi gasps between Gokudera's bruising, intoxicating kisses. "We would have—_ahhh—_"

"Don't compare me to him," Gokudera says after he removes his teeth from the sensitive curve of Takeshi's neck. His eyes are darker than Takeshi has ever seen them and the thick muscle of his jaw jumps. He rests a hand on Takeshi's thigh and absently soothes the sore muscle with his thumb. It feels so good, so good, and he marvels at the double-edged joy that pierces him. "I would never hurt you."

"No," Takeshi says, and places a hand on top of Gokudera's. Gokudera stiffens but does not pull away. "I know you won't."

Gokudera scowls, as brittle as he ever is, and snaps, "What is that supposed to—"

Takeshi shuts him up with another kiss. He tries to say _thank you_ but he doesn't know how; Gokudera tries to tell him _I will take care of you_ but he never will. They convey their anger and frustration and anguish into actions, yet this is all they manage: Gokudera slides his tongue slowly against Takeshi's, Takeshi curls his fingers in Gokudera's soft hair, and they share air when they part for breath.

And for now, it is enough that Gokudera keeps his warm hand atop Takeshi's slowly healing legs.

* * *

**the samurai** || PG-13 || 462 || Squalo/Yamamoto || for **questofdreams**

It is a cold spring day when Takeshi asks, "Why don't you cut your hair?"

The question is thoughtless and flippant. Takeshi only asks because he's known Squalo for six years, and in those six years Takeshi knows Squalo's hair has only grown. Once, Dino had off-handedly told him that Squalo's hair used to be short and wild; Takeshi tries to imagine it and cannot. He likes it as it is now, its blade-like straightness and its metallic paleness, but he's curious about it too. Squalo is a man who cut his own hand off without flinching, but refused to give even an inch of his hair. Takeshi has never been able to figure it out and knows he never will, not unless he asks.

He expects Squalo to either ignore him or to tell him to fuck off, to snap that it is none of his business or it's because he does what he damn well pleases. What Takeshi does not expect, however, is what actually happens: a swift fist to the gut and a fall to the unforgiving ground, Squalo's knees hard against his ribs and the edge of his sword threatening his jugular.

"What do you think, brat?" Squalo snarls. His hair spills carelessly over his trembling shoulders. "Do you think that because we swore fealty to the Vongola that we're your _lapdogs?_"

Takeshi feels his mouth tighten as Squalo laughs, a harsh and choked sound. He has no idea what the other man is talking about.

"I'll give you a hint," Squalo continues, his voice a low hiss. "You're trash. Your pathetic excuse for a boss is trash. Xanxus could eat that little fish in one _bite_ if he wanted. Don't get _complacent_, scum, it'll be your downfall."

The metal of the spatha is a cold line against Takeshi's neck. It gives Takeshi something to focus on, rather than the distracting pink of Squalo's rage flushed cheeks or the heave of his narrow chest. Comprehension blooms slowly in the back of his brain. After all, he and Squalo are not so different; they are both swordsmen, and they are both loyal, and they both have unshakeable pride in both.

"It was just a question," Takeshi replies easily as they stare at each other, one glowering as the other smiles disarmingly as he places his wide, warm palms on top of Squalo's thighs. His ring glitters amongst the tangle of Squalo's hair. "I wasn't accusing you of anything."

"Che," Squalo snorts, as though it hardly matters. He sheathes his sword regardless. "Like I care what you fuckin' think, brat."

"I know," Takeshi laughs, but when he lifts his duty bound hand to smooth an errant strand from Squalo's temple, the other man does not push him away. "I know."

* * *

**a relative measure** || PG-13 || 376 || Kaoru/Yamamoto || for **mochalatt3**

Before Mizuno Kaoru, Takeshi was tall.

He had been the tallest boy in his year since he was eleven. When someone asked about his height, he would smile and give a vague answer about drinking a lot of milk. He knows that his height is largely due to a boon of genetics—his father is tall and his mother was too—but that answer is too scientific for Takeshi. He likes to pretend that his love for milk is the reason his adolescent body stretches further than any other boy's, and wants other people to pretend with him.

Then Kaoru lumbers into his life. He is not only taller than Takeshi, but broader too. The muscles of his arms and torso are firm and thick; they coil and relax underneath his skin with little regard to Takeshi's strange envy. Takeshi cannot help the want to feel that strength beneath his hands. So one day, after they've spent hours on the dusty pitch, Takeshi finds his hands wrapped around the swell of Kaoru's bicep.

"Y-yamamoto?" Kaoru stutters, his blunt, almost ugly face turning red.

"Sorry!" Takeshi laughs, but his touch remains. "I just wanted to feel you, you know?"

Kaoru opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. Then he swallows, heavily, as though he were parched. Beneath Takeshi's hands, his muscles jump and tremble.

"I want to touch you," Takeshi says as his hands skitter to Kaoru's wide shoulders and eventually to the breadth of his impressive chest, where his heart thunders beneath Takeshi's fingertips. He smells like sweat and old leather. "You can touch me too."

Kaoru's hands rise and linger over his hips until Takeshi steps into the heavy grip. His nose bumps Kaoru's strong jaw. His head swims with the power he has over shy and hesitant Kaoru, whose bulk makes him feel small and thin and breakable. It gives him courage.

"I want to kiss you," Takeshi murmurs. "Will you let me?"

Kaoru licks his lips, his eyes dark against his pale lashes. "Y-yeah," he stammers. It sounds like an admission or a plea, and it so readily reflects what Takeshi feels that he smiles against Kaoru's slick skin.

Before Mizuno Kaoru, Takeshi was tall. After they kiss, he is a giant.

* * *

end.


	3. Six Drabbles

**Rated**: G to NC-17 for language, violence, and sexual situations  
**Steve's Notes**: These drabbles were written in celebration of Yamamoto's return in ch. 325.  
**Disclaimer**: _Katekyou Hitman Reborn!_ © Amano Akira

* * *

**the pledge, the turn, the prestige** || PG-13 || 441 || FtM!Julie/Chrome || for **faorism**

The first rule of illusion is that deception is only as good as the deceiver.

(This is how he started: a pair of scissors and a hank of his long hair in his fist. He cut it all off, the red strands like pools of blood across the white tile of the bathroom floor. His mother screeched like a harpy when he came out, his long waves now shorn strands, but the lightness was like being born anew. When she asked him why he cut off all his beautiful hair, he rolled his shoulders and said, "Because I felt like it.")

The second rule of illusion is that deception can only be as real as the deceived believes it.

(Next he took some gauze and wound it too tight around his chest. Tighter and tighter he pulled the gauze, until the line from his throat to his belly button was as straight and gaunt as the rest of him. His mother had stared at the flatness beneath his white t-shirt and the plaid button down until her disembodied voice asked him why he felt the need to look so different. He rolled his shoulders and said, "Because I wanted to.")

The third rule of illusion is that deception can never be the truth.

("You are not my little girl!" his mother shrieks when Julie tell her that he is a boy. Her eyes linger on his short hair and his flat chest, his wiry strength and the small soul patch he wears proudly on his sharp chin. "You were never her, you killed her, you _transvestite!_")

Illusion only has three rules. There are many more clauses, loopholes, and shortcuts, but the rules remain solid and unbreakable. Even illusion, a game of deception, has unshakable foundations. They cannot be changed, cannot be removed, cannot be conquered.

(She looks at him, _sees him_. She peels away his carefully constructed illusions—the physical ones and the ones of Dying Will—and knows him as sure as he knows himself. She cannot be deceived and he hates her for it.

"Julie?" she murmurs, a blush blooming across her pale and pretty cheeks. She clutches at the trident in her hands as though a life line, a crutch.

"Yeah," he grunts, his own hands fists in his pockets.

"You—" she begins, but falters. It is a long time before she picks her shy gaze from the floor and continues, "I don't care."

"Yeah?" he barks, harsh. "Well, _I_ don't fuckin' care.")

Illusion is a truth wrapped in lies.

(A terrible truth, so it is a good thing, perhaps, that Julie is a terribly good liar.)

* * *

**the string** || PG || 536 || Shitt P., Luna || for **melissa_42**

Shittopi has been many places and met many people. She has seen and done many things. An information broker for the Shimon _famiglia_—and, by extension, the Vongola—she refuses to deny her curiosity and the opportunity of experience. To say no is a great tragedy for Shittopi, and she allows the beauty of coincidence to take her where it will.

How she ends up in Luna Lovegood's kitchen, in the cold, barren, and beautiful highlands of Scotland, Shittopi cannot precisely say. She taps her full bottom lip when Luna asks. "There was this broken necklace," she muses. "I think my mother called it a Portkey, in her stories."

Luna waves a hand, her tiny fingers easy on the pale wood of her wand. The cracked, earthen teapot ambles to the old gas stove; the mismatched teacups and wire teaballs arrange themselves on the messy counter. Shittopi watches sharply from behind her rose-colored lenses.

"There is no magic in your family?" Luna asks, tucking her wand absently behind her radish-adorned left ear.

"My grandfather was a wizard," Shittopi replies. "A bad one, too. All his spells were either weak or back-fired spectacularly. He blew his head clean off his shoulders when I was four. But he told my mother all his stories, and she told them to me."

The teapot begins to whistle. An invisible hand picks it up from the stove and pours hot water into each mug.

"There is enough left in your blood," Luna says as the tea steeps, her smile settling in the not yet permanent lines around her gray eyes. "I mean magic, of course. Luck too—did you know that lucks runs in sevens down families? You must be the seventh of a seventh, to have enough dormant magic within you and find my Portkey before it activated."

Shittopi will tell Luna, in a letter carried by a small owl named Phoebe, that she had the beads for weeks. She found them in an antique shop, amid broken jewelry from the seventies, and fell in love with the green and cloudy glass beads, their smooth surfaces chipped by time and carelessness. She will tell Luna how she bought them for a euro and kept them hanging long around her neck, how she let them fall across her skin and between her breasts. For now, however, Shittopi is silent.

"You're the first," Luna continues. "I've been leaving these Portkeys around since the war ended, maybe fifteen years ago? My father used to do it all the time; we'd get the most interesting strangers, you see. The beads must have just enough magic and just enough luck in them, like you Shittopi-chan. The necklace was my mother's, you know."

"We burned my mother's house when we left Italy," Shittopi replies, her fingers touching the deformed glass beads. A pair of mugs float down in front of them; a chipped deer on Shittopi's flicks a velvety ear as it sniffs the grass about its hooves. "The only thing I kept was her eyes."

"Eyes are a wonderful gift," Luna says sagely. She holds up a little pot, painted yellow and black like a bumblebee. She asks, "Honey?"

Shittopi smiles and answers, "Yes please."

* * *

**ghosts** || PG-13 || 564 || Byakuran/Yamamoto || for **pectus_pectoris**

His spine is sinuous length between the paleness of his wings, the feathers soft and strangely warm as they brush Takeshi's naked calves. His smile is slashed oddly across his mouth, as insubstantial as a cloud in the sky, and his thighs straddle Takeshi's waist, but he weighs little more than air. Though his lips do not move when he speaks, fingertips light against Takeshi's breastbone, his musical voice comes from everywhere at once.

_They are in danger,_ the man with wings tells him. His nails scratch pink lines down Takeshi's torso, down to equally pink gauze. _But here you are._

Takeshi's own smile does not waver, even as his fists tighten imperceptibly in the starched hospital sheets. They are so coarse compared to the softness of the wingtips caressing his naked skin.

_You haven't even woken up,_ he continues. _Eight days since the Shimon were tricked, eight days since you were so agonizingly disposed. You're stable now, but the doctors think you will never open your eyes. Even if you do, they believe you will never walk again. With such a terrible wound, you will never play baseball. You will never be Tsunayoshi's Guardian. It's an awful tragedy, don't you think?_

The soft, lyrical tone is at odds with the serious words; the gentle touch that meanders down to the mess that was once Takeshi's abdomen contradicts the snag of fingernails on the airy, stained gauze.

_There is a way to make is go away._ Ethereal violet eyes, no pupils in the irises, stay eerily focused on Takeshi. _I can make it disappear._

"You?" Takeshi laughs, his smile stretched too thin across his face. "What's the catch?"

_There is no catch,_ the winged man promises. He tilts his head, lavender hair brushing his bare shoulder; a pink tongue wets his nearly bloodless lips. _We will be symbiotic for a time. My thoughts will be your thoughts, your thoughts will be my thoughts. We will have one body. We will be closer than lovers and the intimacy may drive you mad—it's been known to happen._

"That doesn't seem like a good deal," Takeshi replies, his grin mostly teeth. "I can't even wake up."

_With me, you can do anything,_ the man murmurs, leans forward. He is so close his hair tickles the sharpness of Takeshi's hungry jaw. _When I am with you, your body will be new. It will be as if you were just born. Of course, when I leave, your body will be weak again. Your wound will return. You may fall back into this dream. You may never wake up. It's a risk, but is it really better than the alternative?_

"What will you get from this?" Takeshi asks.

_Freedom,_ he replies so simply that there must be more, that it can only be the truth.

Takeshi leans back against the flat hospital pillow. He tries to move his legs and fails. Already he can feel his body giving into atrophy and it hollows out the remains of his stomach. Panic rises like bile to the back of his throat, but instead of vomit, a strangled, "Okay, " comes forth.

_You were always so brave, Yamamoto Takeshi,_ the apparition whispers, his motionless mouth in the parody of a kiss against Takeshi's. _Foolish and idealistic, perhaps, but brave._

Then Byakuran drives a hand into Takeshi's wound, and the world goes

white.

* * *

**the seventh round** || R || 675 || Dino/Squalo || for **pollinia**

They inhale the pilfered bottle of Chianti with little regard to its subtle taste—tonight, their blunt aim is senseless inebriation. Sprawled like broken dolls across the kitchen tile, they lean against the cool, modern stainless steel and slowly shed their layers as the alcohol heats their blood. Squalo removes his leather jacket without his usual grace; he flings his prosthetic left hand into a drawer, barking in laughter at the thought of the cook finding it come morning.

Between passes, as Squalo swallows the red wine, Dino slowly strips. He abandons first his rust-colored whip, then his dark silk tie. His cufflinks tumble like old, small bells across the floor and his jacket is tossed carelessly aside, perhaps into the sink. It is almost like their days back in boarding school, when they would get drunk off cheap wine in Dino's single, waiting until they were intoxicated enough to forget that they couldn't press together and suck the sharp taste off the other's tongue.

"Fuck," Squalo hisses as Dino pushes away from the support of the cabinets, crawls on unsteady hands and knees to straddle Squalo's sharp pelvis. "Those bastards."

"Mmmm," Dino hums, plucking the empty bottle from Squalo's hand, thumb against the _gallo nero_ label. He does not know if Squalo is talking about the rival mafiosi they just took care of or the Vongola Nono, whose orders left little room for misinterpretation. With a battered body and a heart that aches less than it should, Dino agrees either way. He lowers his head, presses gentle kisses against the searing column of Squalo's throat, before he sinks his teeth into the meat of the other man's shoulder. It is satisfying to feel Squalo arch into him, to let the taste of his blood and stale skin mingle with the expensive Chianti.

"And you—" Squalo snarls. The fingers of his right hand dig cruelly into Dino's hip; the stump of his left arm is hard against Dino's side. "So _loyal._ Fuck, does that trash even know what you would do? Anything, like a _dog._ Shit, scum like you would kill me, if they ordered it."

Maybe it's the guilt, men dead against a concrete warehouse floor. Maybe it's the dredges of adrenaline, still brittle in Dino's veins. Maybe it's the wine, which always strips him of his human veneer. Maybe it's because the truth always nettles, especially when Squalo bares it as easily as he does his pale skin. Maybe it is all these reasons or maybe it is none, but as Dino sucks on the sensitive flesh behind Squalo's ear, he pulls his Beretta from its holster and places the barrel against Squalo's temple.

"Trash," Squalo slurs as Dino nips his jawline, tugging once on Squalo's bottom lips with his teeth. "Simple trash."

Dino unlocks the safety.

"You would make it quick and clean," Squalo goads. He never shuts up, sober or drunk, safe or threatened or otherwise. "You couldn't fucking strangle me—you wouldn't have the _balls._ Just a bullet to my brain and you'd dream about the mess every night, till you made one of your own."

"I already dream of you every night," Dino murmurs in reply, his words soft and at odds with the hard metal of his gun. "Squalo—"

"Liar," Squalo hisses, but he licks his lips and looks at Dino from underneath the pale blades of his eyelashes. "There are no bullets in that gun."

The last six bullets went into their target family's _consigliere_, stuck him like a pig and bled him like one. Dino tries to imagine Squalo in his place, light hair spilled out further than the dark of his blood, and he pulls the trigger just to see if he can. When the hammer hits and the flint ignites, and all that comes out is the dull click of a loosened spring in a hollow barrel. Dino feels a terrible relief flood through him and thinks, _Never you._

"See?" Squalo smirks, all teeth, as Dino tosses the gun away. "All gone."

* * *

**best served cold** || R || 158 || Hibari/Mukuro || for **mochalatt3**

The tea has gone cold in the untouched clay pot, but the saké Kuskabe heated has no such opportunity. The sleeve of his yukata in hand and the paleness of his wrist exposed, Kyouya rudely pours his cup first. The steam curls in the air like the herbivore's ghost, and Kyouya swallows it without hesitation.

"What will you do now, Kyo—u—ya?" Mukuro teases without his normal malice, his deep voice oddly subdued, his own cup concealing the contortion of his mouth. He is dressed in a plain black suit, the straight and unadorned shoulders as foreign as the plain knot in the hollow of his throat. His unbound hair is a dark river down his torso and there is directionless, hungry beast in his mismatched eyes.

"Wait," Kyouya replies, and sets his empty cup down. His fingers capture the loose ends of Mukuro's hair and when he brings the strands to his lips, he swears, "_Revenge._"

* * *

**Janus** || R || 828 || Dino/Gokudera || for **pectus_pectoris**

What many people do not understand is this: Dino Cavallone is a monster.

It is hard to see in the glittering ballroom of the villa, the crystal chandelier hanging low over the polished marble floors. A handsome man, with charm and good manners, a lyrical voice and unshakeable charisma, Dino slowly works his way to the balcony where Hayato stands, rigid and unsociable. He listens to everyone who stops him—the dolled up small children, the simpering and jewel heavy women, the rough mafiosi—and laughs and smiles in all the appropriate places. He possesses an easy and unassuming demeanor that sets Hayato's teeth on edge. These people are so easily fooled.

With a vast, if veneered, knowledge of history and science, literature and politics, sports and entertainment, Dino can spin yarn with anyone. Many strangers, upon meeting Dino Cavallone, feel as though they have reunited with an old, forgotten friend. Those who know him should know better than to trust him with their deeper and darker secrets, but they believe he will keep those secrets safe and hand them to him easily. He is a vault of gossip and rumors and confidences; he wields all of them with grace and cunning.

Hayato saw through the Cavallone Decimo years ago, when he was slumped teenager chain-smoking Mild Sevens and barely making his monthly rent. Dino had smiled gently at him and greeted him in swaggering Italian. Perhaps it was Dino's charm that Hayato mistrusted, or perhaps he had been around enough mafia men since he was born to see through the thickest façade, but there was something subtly and ineffably wrong about the older man, like a translated book or a dubbed movie. He tried to give Hayato a handshake, but when he refused, Dino had firmly clasped his warm, dry hand high on Hayato's shoulder, his strong and callus thumb whispering against the fine hairs on the nape of Hayato's neck.

"Don't touch me," Hayato snarled, squirming out of Dino's hold. "Fuckin' bastard."

Dino had just smiled and never tried to touch him again. Hayato could have forgiven him, perhaps, if he were an idiot. He can't however, because nothing Dino does is not calculated and measured. Hayato admires Dino's cunning almost as much as he resents it.

"You don't trust me?" Dino often asks. His smile is sly in the corners. "What a shame."

This is how Dino greets Hayato when he crosses the extravagant floor and pries himself from the clutches of criminal society. He has a pair of flutes in his hand, filled high with the honey gold of fine champagne. When he presses one into Hayato's hand, Hayato accepts it only because he has already had too many. "I've seen you kill," he slurs, a nicotine-stained finger against the fine silk of Dino's tie. He downs half the flute's bubbly contents in a single swallow. "Nobody else here has."

This is not the truth, but it is close enough to be one. Dino acknowledges it with an angled smile; he clinks his glass against Hayato's. "_Scacco matto,_" he murmurs.

What makes Dino Cavallone a monster, Hayato knows, is how well he hides. Not many have seen Dino lodge a bullet in the brain of a man begging for his life, or seen him wrap his whip around a man's neck and strangle him. Few have seen the steadiness of his hands when he kills or heard the cordial tone of his voice when he tortures information from unwilling tongues. As the Vongola _consigliere_ and frequent envoy to the allied Cavallone _famiglia_, Hayato has seen Dino as his worst, at his best, and everything in-between. Hayato is sure that besides Romario, he is the only person to have seen all the facets of Dino's personality and live.

"Sometimes I think you are afraid of me, _mio falco,_" Dino says, voice low over the thrum of chatter.

"I told you not to call me that," Hayato snaps.

"_Scusi,_" Dino grins, his white teeth perfect and straight, his skin flawless and olive. He is close enough for the heat of his body and the unidentifiable spice of his cologne to wrap around Hayato like the touch Dino is not allowed and does not attempt. "I always forget that you are fearless."

What many people do not understand is this: Dino Cavallone is a good man, a patient man, and an intelligent man, but he is also a monster. He will listen and he will keep secrets, but he will wield those words like weapons when he can. He knows when to stand down and when to push, when to praise and when to goad. He can wait years for the right opportunity to present itself—for Hayato to turn to him and allow him to press a finger against his pale wrist, where the suit pulls back when he stretches too far, to whisper in his ear, "Come with me, _mio falco._"

("Fucking bastard," Hayato whispers.)

* * *

end.


End file.
